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Comment by phs318u | Hacker News Reader

Oh no. That ridiculously huge dash-shaped Merc screen is going to be one damn expensive part to replace!

It's a Mercedes. Is there any part of one that isn't expensive?

Mercedes also makes the A-series and they're really entry level cars, parts are affordable, and the engines are super reliable. The bigger problem with Mercedes is that their electronics and software positively suck.

> Mercedes A series parts are affordable > The headlight is only sold together with an electronics module for steerable headlight control attached, for a cool 800€.

That module is positioned in such a way that water collects around it if the car gets sufficiently splashed from the front, and it dies even though the PCB is conformally coated.

Yes, this is part and parcel for most cars now, even the cheap brands come with ridiculously expensive headlight assemblies, that are also completely not user serviceable. The LED revolution should have resulted in cheaper headlights, not more expensive ones. Fortunately my car still has a regular bulb and zero electronics outside of the ECU and the radio.

Unsure if you’re being sarcastic, but surely it’s few times cheaper than 30 kilograms of knobs and harnesses.

The knobs and harnesses don't tend to fail as a unit.

And as Tesla is finding out when you have critical safety systems such as wipers or defrosters attached to a touchscreen and that screen can fail- then you will face a mandated recall from the us government. Hell even Honda's trash infotainment system got hit this year because their gauge cluster and rearview camera could fail. https://www.consumerreports.org/car-recalls-defects/honda-re...

Screens are much more likely to be tied to complex systems that could fail. Buttons talking to a BCM by grounding out wires is pretty simple and if there were ever a recall on a switch the part would be cheap.

Not being sarcastic. A single, hi-res, (possibly oled?) screen that needs to be replaced in its entirety vs a bunch of individual components which can be individual replaced. The up-front cost may not be too different (possibly the screen is cheaper?) but how robust, how much flex, how much tolerance to vibration does it need to have over 5-10-15 years? And good luck getting one in 15 years. A knob is still a knob even on a wreck. An intact screen? Rare as hen's teeth I imagine. Increasing obsolescence right there.

Not great comparison but take iPad for example (different scale of production of course). It’s packed with tech and won’t magically rub off even in 50 years of use. Likeliest failure is software obsolescence, battery, charging and drops.

It costs $600 and is faster than your computer.

its not 1985, cars with dials and switches use canbus which only needs a few wires regardless of how many buttons are in a module.

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